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Remembering Alan Rickman

I’d just got back to the car after going shopping this morning when I heard the news that Alan Rickman had died. I was waiting for my mum to pay the parking ticket so was scrolling through Twitter as you do when I saw all the Tweets. It must have been just as the news broke because a lot of them were linking to news articles and were general displays of shock. I couldn’t really believe it either.

I was born in 1991 and grew up watching Alan Rickman. One of my mum’s favourite films (so therefore it became one of my favourites and a formative influence) was Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Alan Rickman was a fantastic, over the top and evil Sheriff of Nottingham. He had the best lines, stole every scene he was in and was more than a match for Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood. I love that film and it’s one that I’ll always watch whenever it’s on TV.

My next “proper” exposure to Alan Rickman was in the Harry Potter films. I was definitely a part of the Harry Potter generation, I remember starting to read Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone in 2001, just after me and my mum had moved into our new home after my parents had divorced. I loved the books and then loved the films. Some actors were perfectly cast in those films and Alan Rickman as Severus Snape was one of them. He was foreboding and intimidating but when it came to showing the softer side to Snape in the later films he was equally brilliant.

And then there’s the other performance that I will always think of when I think of Alan Rickman – Metatron in Dogma. I watched Dogma for the first time at University, I think I watched it so I could reference in in a film essay but I loved it way more than I thought I would. Rickman’s deadpan delivery and air of boredom when it comes to the ridiculousness he’s found himself involved in are wonderful.

There’s obviously many more roles that Alan Rickman will be remembered for but those three are what made him special to me. I can’t help but feel very sad at his passing, maybe it’s also the sadness from David Bowie’s death is hitting me now as well. To lose two such great and influential people in the space of a week is heart-breaking and a sign of our mortality.